


About that Tree

by Laekin



Category: Rubicon
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laekin/pseuds/Laekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What lays behind those domestic squabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About that Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dorinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Dorinda!
> 
> Here is your Yuletide gift, I had a great time writing this as I also adore Kale Ingram and mourn that we lost Rubicon too early. I hope that I've been able to give you the glimpse you were looking for in this fic, I was inspired by the Thanksgiving and Hot Chip discussions and that you have a wonderful holiday!
> 
> I also want to give thanks to my long suffering beta who set aside a serious case of the flu to beta this fic for me in time to get it put up for Yuletide.

“Just a small one.”

“No.”

“Three feet, it would fit perfectly in that corner by the bookcases.”

“It will shed needles.”

“We can put down a skirt and I’ll clean up the needles.”

“No.”

“Kale,” I sighed, exasperated but he didn’t even glance over as we walked along, weaving through the early evening foot traffic.

Why did I bother? We’d had this argument since our first Christmas together when I initially suggested getting a tree for the apartment. All I wanted was a modest Douglas Fir to put in the corner, decorate and enjoy, the scent of fresh pine in doors, something that would always remind me of my childhood.

But Kale was always adamant; no tree in his immaculate apartment, no matter how I weedled, promised, plead or tried to bribe he was firm in his resolve. Still I could not, not argue for a tree, especially when I saw all the conifers on top of the cars and trucks driving through the city.

However, I had to admit the discussion itself, was becoming a tradition of our own!

“What about a table topper?” I tossed out and Kale actually looked pained for a moment as he stopped and turned to face me.

My heart sank, I was about to get the firm, ‘no’ delivered in the tone, which said the subject was closed and no longer open for discussion. I didn’t get the tone often these days, not like in the early months of our relationship, when I’d faced the steep learning curve of what subjects Kale Ingram would and would not give on.

To be fair, he gave me a lot more latitude than I imagine he gave most of the other people in his life, but when he put his foot down he expected me to tow the line. His foot was about to come down, for yet another year, on the subject of a tree, I could see it in the steely firmness of his pale eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners with annoyance.

Bracing myself to accept defeat I blinked in surprise when Kale’s gaze slid away from my face and focused on something beyond my left shoulder. Frowning, I turned to look behind me, careful not to block his line of sight but I needn’t have worried as his hand landed on my elbow pushing me behind and to the side.

“Stay here,” he commanded as he moved quickly past me.

For the record, I’m a grown man who is well into his thirties. I have a well paying job, which I am recognized as being very good at. I have a healthy discretionary income and I’ve been wiping my own ass since I was potty trained at the age of three. That said, when Kale speaks in _that_ tone you couldn’t get me to go against him if you threatened to drop a grand piano on my head.

In fact, when he speaks in that soft, steely voice, I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone willing to buck his authority.

From my spot on the sidewalk I could see him disappear into an alley that opened up a block away from where I was standing. The mouth of the alley was already awash in evening shadows; I frowned and wondered what had caught his attention.

Hell, I wondered how the hell he’d even _seen_ , no one with normal human vision could have seen past the edge of the sidewalk leading into the alley. Then again, Kale isn’t what you would define as _normal_. He’s quite extraordinary, which is partly why I stood obediently where he’d left me.

Minutes passed, and I began to wonder if I should start looking for a policeman, when Kale’s pale face appeared at the mouth of the alley. He did not look happy, in fact, if you know what to look for, he looked positively murderous –it’s all in the a certain tightness around his mouth, in case you were wondering- as he waved me to come over.

Without thinking, I jumped to respond. When Kale has that look on his face, you don’t dawdle, and even the blaring horn of a passing taxi failed to slow me down. Giving the irate driver an apologetic wave I jogged the rest of the way across the road, up onto the other sidewalk and towards the alley. As I got close, Kale reached and grabbed me by my jacket.

“Walter, I swear …” he began in the low tone he uses when he’s seriously wondering about a person’s mental facilities.

“I didn’t see it!”

“You never do,” he said in an exasperated tone.

I didn’t protest further. Stepping in front of cars was an unfortunate habit of mine and did not make a good argument for my sense of self preservation. But, that’s why I had Kale; he was very good at keeping me out of harm’s way.

At the moment, however, he was tugging me down a dark and dare I say odoriferous, alley towards a pile of cardboard boxes. When we got closer I noticed his Hugo Boss coat was lying in a lump on the ground. No, wait … it was lying _on_ a lump on the ground.

“Kale?”

“Stay with him.”

“Here?” My voice might have squeaked as I glanced around at shadows that seemed to move and whisper with ominous intent.

Kale’s only response to my disquiet was to catch my eye and give me a level look. His eyes were still cold and to anyone else his expression would appear devoid of any emotion, yet I felt a rush of confidence as I looked into his eyes .

“I’ll be back,” he said before disappearing further into the alley.

Left, for the time being, to my own devices, I hunkered down next to the pathetic looking scrap of humanity that lay curled up on a box beneath my lover’s designer leather coat. I tried my best to ignore the stench coming from the combination of alley and unwashed body but I couldn’t help pulling the edge of my own coat a bit closer to my nose.

As the minutes ticked by, I began to glance over my shoulder. In my heart, I knew that Kale would never have left if there was any danger lurking about, but the situation was so surreal that I couldn’t entirely grasp what we were doing out here. A low moan caught my attention and I shook off my own concerns and reached to shift the leather coat in an attempt to cover more of the curled form.

As I pulled on the coat, I exposed dirty white hair. It was hard to see the man’s face but this was not a young man by any stretch of the imagination. He had to be in his eighties.

“What are you doing out here in this weather,” I fretted, our precarious situation forgotten as I quickly shrugged out of my slightly longer coat, adding it to my lover’s before glancing back up the alley in the direction Kale had disappeared.

A quick check of my watch assured me not much time had passed, though it seemed an eternity until Kale returned with two uniformed officers and EMTs. The EMTs shooed me unceremoniously out of the way as they moved around the cardboard boxes to reach the man bundled under our coats. Moving back, I wrapped my arms around myself against the chill of the night and focused my attention on Kale and the two uniforms.

My lover was giving descriptions and amazingly one of the officers was taking careful notes. Now, while I have the utmost respect for the members of our city’s police force, even I’m jaded enough to wonder why they were … well, caring. The situation looked painfully typical to me; an older homeless man being preyed upon by younger predators and I couldn’t help thinking the chances of finding the perpetrators were slim to none.

Usually Kale’s the cynical, excuse me, _practical_ one.

Yet, there stood my lover, giving very thorough and intent information on what he’d seen and watching the younger officers with an expression that said he expected answers; sooner rather than later. This was getting more and more curious with every passing moment.

Kale has never been a man who just steps over a body on the sidewalk without even looking down but at the same time he’s never shown a particular zealous for the plight of the homeless either. That said, I recognized the look in his eyes. Something about this person has grabbed his attention and he was going to start shifting mountains till he got answers.

***

I honestly could not follow the series of events that got us from the alley to that hospital waiting room. I vaguely remember Kale jumping in the back of the ambulance without bothering to ask permission from the EMTs, leaving me with my arm full of coats in need of dry cleaning and orders to meet him at the hospital.

Grabbing a cab took me about ten minutes and then another ten to get down to the hospital. Add on another twenty to get someone to tell me where I could find my lover, “About so tall, pale eyes, no nonsense attitude?” and I soon found myself wending my way through the corridors down to the registration office. Despite its soft, dulcet tones I could quickly identified Kale’s voice and headed in his direction.

“Mr. Ingram, I appreciate your concern on John Doe 3’s behalf but you must understand…”

“My apologies, Ms. Patters but I don’t believe you do appreciate my concern for if you did you’d be entering his information into your computer,” Kale’s voice was level to the point of sounding bored but he was livid; the more irate he is, the quieter he speaks.

“If the ER doctors recommend that we admit…”

“Without insurance, how likely is that?”

“Now, Mr. Ingram we would never compromise the health of a patient,” someone in the conversation was definitely starting to sound testy.

“ _If_ the ER attending …”

Oh hell, I knew _that_ inflection and more importantly, what it meant when he circled the conversation back to trip you up on an ill chosen word. This conversation was about to head south fast and while I’ll always put my money on Kale, he was likely to end up making things worse for himself.

In the short run at least, in the long run things always seem to turn out worse for who ever has opposed him.

Clearing my throat, loudly, I pushed my way into the small vestibule and gave the woman behind the glass a wave.

“Uhm, hi.”

Brown eyes looked back at me, her expression hostile, though she also looked relieved to no longer be the singular subject of Kale’s implacable attention.

“Can I help?” I offered, not having any idea what I could possibly do but one look at the set of Kale’s shoulders told me I’d better think of something quick before he went through the glass after the sour looking Ms. Patters.

“Yes,” he said quickly, shifting from annoyed to cunning in the span of a breath. “Give Ms. Patters our information while I make a phone call.”

Without even a glance back at the woman in question Kale unfolded himself from the plastic chair with the grace of a big cat. Taking his coat from my arm, he ghosted silently down the hall.

Left standing in that small cubicle, I’d have loved to know what was going on. No seriously, if someone could draw me a map of how we got from arguing about a Christmas tree, to standing in a busy hospital, arguing with the admin staff about admitting an unconscious, eighty something year old homeless man, I’d be forever grateful.

Unfortunately and as was often the case with Kale, I was doomed to be taking these things on faith. It was just the way he worked, a man who knew what the final picture should look like but who would only share bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle with the rest of the class. There was no point in arguing about it or trying to second guess the man, he was infinitely smarter than I.

And well, he’d earned my faith several times over, so I folded my coat on the back of the chair and sat down, smiling at the perturbed looking Ms. Patters.

“Hello, I’m Walter Carrington…”

For the next two hours I jousted with Ms. Patters on the finer points of medical laws, insurance, HIPPA and just about any other stalling tactic I could think of on the fly. Experience with my own elderly grandparents gave me just enough knowledge to be able to ask question that kept Ms. Patters from slamming the window shut in my face but I wasn’t going to be able to keep her engaged for much longer and in fact we were close to an impasse when her phone rang.

“You want to get that.”

Kale’s low voice, spoken just behind my shoulder, started me in a quick glance back and forth between my lover and Ms. Patters. Kale looked pleased –again it’s all in the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes- while Patters looked perturbed. Kale nodded imperiously at her phone, which she snatched up with a rude ‘Patters!’ snapped into the receiver.

I looked back at Kale but his attention was completely focused on Patters, gray eyes hawk-like as he waited for … honestly I’m not sure. Ignored by one party, I turned my attention back to the other, but Patters was equally engaged in her conversation, her mouth pinched in a tight line. Though it appeared that she was trying to interrupt whomever she spoke with, eventually she just sat there silently, accepting whatever verbal tongue lashing she was receiving.

“Yes, sir,” was all she said before hanging up the phone and turning to type furiously on her keyboard.

Seriously, I feared for the space key a couple of times.

In less than three minutes she stood up to grab papers off the printer, sorted and separated them and finally shoved about five under the glass where they nearly landed in my lap. Without pause, I scooped them up and handed them over my shoulder to Kale who took them from my hand without comment.

“Thank you,” I offered to Ms. Patters, who merely gave me a look of loathing. “Have a Happy Holiday!”

Just because she was being rude, didn’t mean I had to be and I waved cheerfully as I scooted around the chair and took a couple jogging steps to catch up with Kale. He was almost halfway down the hall and heading for a bank of elevators by the time I was able to draw even with him.

It was the first time since he’d first disappeared into the alley that I’d had a chance to really look at him and I felt my eyes widen in alarm.

“What happened?” I asked sharply, reaching to catch his elbow, drawing him to a stop and turning to face him.

As a rule I’ve learned not to question Kale. He doesn’t like it when I push too hard about matters he does not hesitate to tell me are none of my business. This whole surreal December evening felt like one of those ‘none of my business’ situations but I couldn’t help the questions in my eyes. Why was there a _knife slash_ across his abdomen, rendering the fine wool of his Armani sweater, what did it have to do with the complete stranger he’d rescued from the cold New York street and while we were at it … KNIFE SLASH?!?

Kale glanced down at his shirt and frowned.

“It’s nothing,” he said dismissively and turned to keep walking down the hall.

Now I’m certainly no expert but I’m fairly certain Kale was more annoyed at the fact that one of his favorite sweaters was now ruined rather than being upset at having a knife slash across his abdomen. Personally, I’d have been more freaked out of the latter than inclined to care about the former. But then I wasn’t Kale, who was getting further and further down the hall and once again I had to jog to catch up with him.

We stayed at the hospital for a couple more hours, long enough for Kale to see the man moved into a room and then to disappear with a large looking fellow for a little over half an hour while I made myself comfortable in the waiting room. Despite the cliché, the couch wasn’t half bad and I was almost asleep when a hand shook me back to awareness.

“Hmmm?”

“Time to go,” Kale said quietly, though he was giving me one of his rare, gentle smiles that never fail to turn my heart upside down in my chest.

Smiling automatically in return, I unfolded myself from the couch and shrugged into my coat. In short order the pair of us were out of the hospital and back onto the street. It had started to snow; nothing that would stick for any length of time but it was pretty and tickled my nose. Without thinking about it I stuck my tongue out to catch a flake, glancing to my side when I heard Kale make a suspicious coughing noise.

Yep he was choking back the desire to laugh at me. He certainly seemed in a much lighter mood than he had been all day and seeing him happy made me smile.

“Come on,” he said, reaching to hook my hand into his elbow. “Let’s walk for a bit.”

“Uh … sure.” I agreed, surprised because while Kale keeps himself disgustingly fit, walking at night under the city lights in the falling snow is more romantic than cardio progressive.

Not that Kale can’t be romantic but it’s usually in the form of a special dinner at home or maybe taking me out to one of my favorite restaurants. Walking in the falling snow is rather impractical and as such is more my idea of romance than Kale’s. Still I wasn’t about to look gift romance in the mouth and settled in by his side for our stroll.

As we walked my mind began to drift away from the strange events of our day and I simply enjoyed the lights in windows and the gentle caress of snow on my face. Time passed in companionable silence, as it often did when I was with Kale, something I treasure about our relationship and I believe he does as well. I was so caught up in the study of a passing hansom cab, all decked out for Christmas, that I almost jumped when Kale spoke.

“He is a retired Marine,” he said in that low, gentle tone of his that yet, never fails to carry over the sounds of the city.

“Sorry?”

“That man, tonight. He is a retired Marine who served in the Pacific theater.”

My attention was captured not by the admission but by the fact that Kale was sharing this information with me. Kale doesn’t often share his personal, pet projects and I’ve learned not to dwell on the subjects or let the many secrets in his life come between us. I suppose I’d started to file tonight’s adventure in that category, writing off the chance of getting any explanation, yet … here Kale was, explaining himself.

“How did you know?”

“I suspected,” was all Kale offered.“Then in the hospital, when I was able to get his VA file I confirmed my suspicion.”

“What’s a retired Marine of his age doing on the streets?”

Kale glanced over at me and I thought I saw a hint of sadness in his eyes.

“Sign of the times,” he said simply and looked back ahead. “It won’t happen again.”

Something in the way he said the last bit made me glance sharply at his profile but I could tell by the set of his mouth that the subject was now closed. If history had taught me anything it was to accept that this homeless Marine would be taken care of well beyond his hospital stay and it would be at the pleasure of my lover that this would happen.

How Kale managed to do this, whom he called, what red tape he sliced through I’d never know but then I didn’t need to know, I simply needed to accept on faith that when it came to the care of a fellow Marine, Kale had moved mountains.

As we walked a car with a large spruce on its roof worked its way through traffic and caught my eye. The tree was all fluffy and some snow had started to stick to its pretty green branches. It made me smile and I glanced over at Kale.

He was still walking along, pretending he hadn’t seen the tree but I know he had; he sees everything. I could feel the very subtle tension that had been running through his body since I’d taken his arm, start to fade and I realized that as contrary as it might sound, he was waiting for me to pick up the argument about the tree.

I knew we weren’t going to end up with a tree but as surely as I knew this, I also knew that Kale needed me to argue the point with him. That he needed the normalcy of our little domestic squabble to help wash away the intensity of the fight he’d engaged in to protect the old Marine. I’ve seen it often before when he’s come from home from work, looking calm and collected in the eyes of the world but thrumming with an unknown tension as if he’s carrying the weight of that same world on his shoulders.

I can never not seek to help ease him during these times; it’s a part of our relationship that both of us seem to cherish and even though I know I’m destined to loose the argument I give his arm a discreet hug and smile up at the snowy night sky.

“So, about that tree…”


End file.
